On December 13, 2000, the seven carried out an elaborate scheme and escaped from the John B. Connally Unit, a maximum-security state prison near the South Texas city of Kenedy.[10]

At the time of the breakout, the reported ringleader of the Texas Seven, 30-year-old George Rivas, was serving 18 consecutive 15-to-life sentences. Michael Anthony Rodriguez, 38, was serving a 99-to-life term, while Larry James Harper, 37, Joseph Garcia and Patrick Henry Murphy, Jr., 39, were all serving 50 year sentences. Donald Keith Newbury, the member with the longest rap sheet of the group, was serving a 99-year sentence, and the youngest member, Randy Halprin, 23, was serving a 30-year sentence for injury to a child.[citation needed]

Using several well-planned ploys, the seven convicts overpowered and restrained nine civilian maintenance supervisors including their boss, four correctional officers and three uninvolved inmates at approximately 11:20 a.m. The escape occurred during lunch and at count time, the "slowest" period of the prison day, when there was less surveillance of certain locations, such as the maintenance area. Most of these plans involved one of the offenders calling someone over, while another hit the unsuspecting person on the head from behind. Once each victim was knocked unconscious, the offenders removed some of his clothing, tied him up, gagged him and placed him in an electrical room behind a locked door, which was full of electronics including warning alarms. The attackers stole clothing, credit cards, and identification from their victims. The group impersonated prison officers on the phone and created false stories to ward off suspicion from authorities.[citation needed]

After this first phase, three of the group made their way to the back gate of the prison, some disguised in stolen civilian clothing. They pretended to be there to install video monitors. One guard at the gatehouse was subdued, and the trio raided the guard tower and stole numerous weapons. Meanwhile, the four offenders who stayed behind made calls to the prison tower guards to distract them. They then stole a prison maintenance pick-up truck, which they drove to the back gate of the prison, picked up their cohorts, and drove away from the prison.[citation needed]

On December 19, four of the members checked into an Econo Lodge motel in Farmers Branch, Texas, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, under assumed names.[13] They decided to rob an Oshman's Sporting Goods in nearby Irving. On December 24, 2000, they entered the store, bound and gagged all the staff and stole at least 40 guns and sets of ammunition. An off-duty employee standing outside of the store noticed the commotion inside and called police.[14] Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins responded to the call, arrived on the scene and was almost immediately ambushed; his autopsy later showed that he had sustained 11 gunshots and had been run over by the escaped convicts as they fled the scene. Hawkins died at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas shortly after his arrival.[15]

After Officer Hawkins's murder, a $100,000 reward was offered to whomever could snare the group of criminals. The reward climbed to $500,000 before the group was apprehended.

The FBI Denver SWAT team found Garcia, Rodriguez, and Rivas in a Jeep Cherokee in the RV Park. The FBI followed them to a nearby gas station and arrested them. They found Halprin and Harper in an RV; Halprin surrendered peacefully, but Harper was found dead after a standoff; he had shot himself in the chest with a pistol. The surviving four members were taken into federal custody.[16]

On January 23, 2001 the FBI received information on the whereabouts of the remaining two escapees, Newbury and Murphy. They were hiding in a Holiday Inn in Colorado Springs, Colorado. A deal brokered between the two, allowed them to make live TV appearances before they were arrested.[17] In the early hours of January 24, a local KKTV television anchorman, Eric Singer, was taken into the hotel where he interviewed the two by telephone while on camera. Newbury and Murphy harshly denounced the criminal justice system in Texas, with Newbury adding "the system is as corrupt as we are."[citation needed]

In 2008 authorities indicted Patsy Gomez and Raul Rodriguez, the parents of Michael Rodriguez, for conspiring to help the Texas 7.[18]

George Rivas was sentenced to death after being extradited to Texas. Subsequently, the other four surviving members of the Texas 7 were also sentenced to death along with Rivas.[citation needed]

Rodriguez announced that he wished to forgo any further appeal beyond the appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, mandatory in all death-penalty cases. A court-ordered psychiatric evaluation in January 2007 concluded that he was mentally competent to decide to forgo further appeals. Twenty months later he was the first of the 5 surviving members to be executed, on August 14, 2008.[19][20] Rodriguez was TDCJ#999413, and his pre-death sentence TDCJ number was 698074.[21]

George Rivas, TDCJ#999394, was executed almost 4 years later, on February 29, 2012, at 6:22 pm.[22]

Donald Newbury, TDCJ#999403,[23] was executed by lethal injection on February 4, 2015, at 6:25 pm.

In 2007, Wild Dream Films produced The Hunt For The Texas 7, a 90-minute feature documentary about the prison break. The film was aired in late September 2008 on MSNBC. The film features interviews with members of The Texas 7 currently on Death Row and eyewitnesses to their crimes.

On March 25, 2011, Investigation Discovery aired an episode about the case subtitled "The Deadly Seven". One year later, on March 23, 2012, Investigation Discovery aired an episode of Werner Herzog's documentary series On Death Row which dealt with Rivas and Garcia. The seven were also featured in an episode of Real Prison Breaks on ITV4 in the UK.